Lypsync Problem and occasional "blockyness"

canadiain · #1 (**permalink**) 01-04-2005, 07:13 PM

Hi there good forum people, I'm new to video editing, living in canada, trying to send footage of our kid back to the grandparents in the UK. I hope you guys can help me here, but its my first post, so please be gentle

System is relatively new stock athlon 64 based HPa530n, with a sony TRV18 camcorder (NTSC format).

OK, heres my problem, once I edit the clips together using the Intervideo WinDVD creator software that came with the system, if I burn a DVD in PAL format, the lypsyncing is fine, but if I burn the same thing in NTSC, I get about a 4 second delay by the end of 1hour (sound lags behind video), which is very irritating! Any hints or tips to eliminate this would be a godsend.

Second issue is using IEEE 1394 to transfer the data from the camera to the PC, I still occasionally get blocky sections of footage that are fine viewed on the camera, obviously this is something to do with losing data during the transfer, is it just as simple as having bought a cheapo cable rather than a more expensive "Monster"?

Last thing (honest

:lol: )does anyone know if there is any 64bit based editing/authoring software at the low end of the $$$ range? It would be nice to exploit the 64 capability of my PC if possible, but googling hasnt found anything short of industrial level stuff.

Thanks for your time!

Iain

Marc Peters · #2 (**permalink**) 01-04-2005, 10:51 PM

Quote:

please be gentle

I'll try

Quote:

OK, heres my problem, once I edit the clips together using the Intervideo WinDVD creator software that came with the system, if I burn a DVD in PAL format, the lypsyncing is fine, but if I burn the same thing in NTSC, I get about a 4 second delay by the end of 1hour (sound lags behind video), which is very irritating!

Strange. I assume the PAL DVD was for the UK relatives? Some less well renowned software sometimes have a habit of doing this. Have you downloaded and installed all the latest updates?

Quote:

Second issue is using IEEE 1394 to transfer the data from the camera to the PC, I still occasionally get blocky sections of footage that are fine viewed on the camera, obviously this is something to do with losing data during the transfer, is it just as simple as having bought a cheapo cable rather than a more expensive "Monster"?

The transfer from Camcorder to PC is theoretically lossless. Are you sure the artifacts aren't appearing when you ENCODE to MPEG (i.e "stick it on a DVD)?

Quote:

Last thing (honest

)does anyone know if there is any 64bit based editing/authoring software at the low end of the $$$ range? It would be nice to exploit the 64 capability of my PC if possible, but googling hasnt found anything short of industrial level stuff.

No. And I believe you'd have to also use a 64-bit Operating System too (which limits you to linux or a beta version of windows 64-bit).

canadiain · #3 (**permalink**) 01-05-2005, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marc Peters

I'll try

Thanks for the quick (and gentle!) reply Marc

Quote:

Strange. I assume the PAL DVD was for the UK relatives? Some less well renowned software sometimes have a habit of doing this. Have you downloaded and installed all the latest updates?

Certainly is strange, I think I installed all the updates, but its still the "freeware" version that came installed, I've not paid anything extra for it, and I'm not inclined to as it doesnt seem to do what I want it to.

Quote:

The transfer from Camcorder to PC is theoretically lossless. Are you sure the artifacts aren't appearing when you ENCODE to MPEG (i.e "stick it on a DVD)?

Could well be that, the clips are in MPEG format when they are saved on the PC from the camcorder, so the artifacts are probably occuring at that stage. I guess I assumed in my ignorance that the DV camcorder was saving them as MPEG and that was just being transfered to a different storage device. Is there some way to prevent this happening then?, I think I have it set to the most accurate (eg highest res, slowest) setting.

Quote:

No. And I believe you'd have to also use a 64-bit Operating System too (which limits you to linux or a beta version of windows 64-bit).

I dont mind switching to a 64 bit OS to do it, this machine was bought basically for doing the video, hence my frustration. I dont really want to pay a couple of hundred $ for 32 bit software, and then pay again to switch to 64 bit later

but it looks like I jumped the gun, and 64 bit is not available yet for this application. Do you know if anything is in the pipeline, surely there must be a demand for this application as 64 bit processors become more widely available, and the performance advantages are supposed to be pretty significant. In the mean time do you have any suggestions for good (&cheap

) 32 bit software I could try?

Thanks again, I appreciate it!

Iain

Mike Thorpe · #4 (**permalink**) 01-05-2005, 03:13 PM

You checked this out:

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

?

canadiain · #5 (**permalink**) 01-05-2005, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikefishcake

You checked this out:

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

?

Thanks for the link, I think I came across that before... it was the $14k pricetag and dual 64bit processors that had me thinking "industrial"

Looking for something a bit more "occasional user", but it has got me thinking about Linux in a less casual way. Does anyone out there have any experience working in a Linux environment to do this kind of thing? How common is it for home users working with video as a hobby?

I found this link, which looks like a promising start...
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/Lin...rialVideo.html

Cheers

Iain

Marc Peters · #6 (**permalink**) 01-05-2005, 05:38 PM

You can get a review edition of windows 64bit from here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/6...n/upgrade.mspx

I see little or no point in you investigating 64bit applications at this stage:

1) the only gain in using applications designed for a 64bit architecture will be in encoding (and it therefore follows rendering) - and I have yet to see any benchmarks to prove this, only hearsay.

2) any release will be buggy and therefore performance gains outweighed by efficiency losses. Most 32bit applications are several releases old and based on a well known software architecture. Both Windows XP and Adobe Premiere Pro are completely stable for me and have been (*touch wood*)

3) where do you draw the line? If you want to invest in 64bit applications, why did you choose a DV cam over an HDV one?

Here is part of an interview with Dave Trescot, senior director of Adobe:

Quote:

DMN: As a general technological question, do you think that 64-bit computing will help Premiere Pro users? Is this a grand future that we're looking forward to with 64 bit, or will it not make much difference?

Trescot: I think 64-bit computing is a benefit for some types of work. It always comes down to a question of, what are you doing, and how does that performance help you? So if you're doing DV work, the reality is, 64-bit computing probably isn't going to have much impact on you, because do you need 20 layers of real-time video? Well, the odds are you don't do that, so if you're on a standard PC today, with a 3GHz processor and you're doing four streams of DV, what else are you looking for? So I think that what happens is that you will see the higher-end processing benefiting the higher-end application use. So it may be film people using it, but certainly not event videographers.

DMN: I see. For example if you're editing high definition, then the ability to handle files that are 8 gigabytes in size might give 64-bit a huge edge?

Trescot: File sizes are not the current limitation for people. What you get in 64-bit computing is you move chunks of data around faster, and you do processing on that sometimes faster. It's more of an issue of being able to move large amounts of data, so in supporting HD, where you'll get the benefit will be just the amount of data that you have to move around, and do even simple processing on.

http://www.creativemac.com/articles/...jsp?id=25775-1

I'd invest in 32bit applications - and remember that upgrades are always less expensive than full versions.

canadiain · #7 (**permalink**) 01-05-2005, 07:01 PM

So does anyone think its worth taking a punt on the "full" version of the Intervideo winDVD, even though I still have this "lag" issue with the sound on the trial version? Im not particularly keen to do that, as I have no faith that it will make any difference, but it is probably the cheapest option for me (if it works)

Otherwise, what would you recommend as a good budget software for the basic authoring I'm trying to do, hopefully something that will help with the encoding artifacts as well.

I guess WinDVD isnt working so well for me :(

Marc Peters · #8 (**permalink**) 01-05-2005, 07:04 PM

Pure Motion Edit Studio 4

Mike Thorpe · #9 (**permalink**) 01-05-2005, 11:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by canadiain

Thanks for the link, I think I came across that before... it was the $14k pricetag and dual 64bit processors that had me thinking "industrial"

Yeah, i saw that first, but then relaised that the price was for the hardware

canadiain · #10 (**permalink**) 01-18-2005, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marc Peters

Pure Motion Edit Studio 4

Thanks for the tip, it seems to work well. Just a bit of a pain to have 3 different progs to edit the clips, convert NTSC to PAL, and burn the disk, but its a minor inconvenience.

Seems to run a lot faster on my machine than the WinDVD too, which is a nice bonus.

Iain